I have wanted to try making my own cream eggs for a while and found a variety of recipes. After a bit of tweaking this is what I came up with.
I made three versions: cream egg, coffee egg and sweet filled (actually I did a nail varnish filled for my neice too but the container didn’t quite fit).
Making the shells:
I used a silicon mould which made it very easy to get them out. I found the best method was to pour the chocolate in and then spread it around the mould with a food safe paintbrush.
I found 3 layers created quite a thin shell and 4 layers quite a thick shell.
I haven’t learnt to temper chocolate properly especially for small amounts but I did see a demonstration where they said the easiest way was to use seed chocolate to cool it down quickly having a tempering effect. This may be complete nonsense as I’ve not looked into it but it seemed to work fairly well and my chocolate dried fairly hard and shiny.
1. Melt your chocolate on 50% power in the microwave until completely melted (I found bursts of 40, 30, 20, 15 seconds worked about right.
2. Chop up one square of chocolate into small pieces and pop these in the melted chocolate then stir until it has all melted.
3. Pour chocolate into each mould and push around the edges with a food safe paintbrush. Run a sharp knife edge across the top to remove excess.
4. Pop in the fridge for ten minutes.
5. If the chocolate has hardened too much, repeat the melting process above, including the chopped chocolate. Pour some more ibto the moulds and repeat as above.
7. Repeat for 3 or 4 layers as desired and after the last layer leave in the fridge for 30 mins.
The fillings:
Sweets – any you choose – I used Dolly Mixtures.
Cream egg:
The first recipe I saw asked for butter and this was delicious but not particularly cream egg like. I think this batch had too much vanilla too. I really liked the taste but for a more authentic cream egg flavour I found trex with just a little butter worked best and just a touch of vanilla. The picture below shows the butter version.
1 cup corn syrup
1/2 cup shortening (trex) or butter
1/4 tsp vanilla
Pinch of salt
Roughly 2 cups sifted icing sugar
1. Soften the butter or shortening as necessary and pop in your mixer and beat on high for a few minutes until very smooth. Add the corn syrup and vanilla and mix on medium until smooth.
2. Add the icing sugar a little at a time on low, stopping when it is still smooth and a bit runny.
3. Keep covered until ready to use as it develops a skin if left without a cover.
Coffee eggs:
Make as above but put 2 tsp instant coffee in an egg cup and add hot water. Stir until dissolved and use about 4-5 teaspoons until it has the coffee strength you like. Add more powdered sugar to thicken back to desired consistency.
Filling the eggs:
1. Push the eggs out of the mould and make sure you have 2 halves that match. Annoyingly my mould has 6 halves so you only get 2 matching halves each time.
2. Make sure the chocolate is melted and repeat the seed chocolate process as above.
3. Spoon your desired filling into each half. If you are doing cream eggs, then spoon a little of the filling out and mix with yellow or orange food colouring (I found one drop of each looked best). Then spoon a little of the yellow filling on top of the white.
4. Use the paint brush to brush melted chocolate round each edge then press together making sure it matches well. Use your finger to brush off any excess from the join. Chill in the fridge to set.
Enjoy!
Lou's CreaBAKEtions 